War! War! The chains of
the conscripts clanked in the river villages; the
wailing of the women affrighted the pigeons in a thousand
dovecotes on the Nile; the dust of despair was heaped
upon the heads of the old, who knew that their young
would no more return, and that the fields of dourha
would go ungathered, the water-channels go unattended,
and the onion-fields be bare. War! War!
War! The strong, the broad-shouldered ­Aka,
Mahmoud, Raschid, Selim, they with the bodies of Seti
and the faces of Rameses, in their blue yeleks and
unsandalled feet ­would go into the desert
as their forefathers did for the Shepherd Kings.
But there would be no spoil for them ­no
slaves with swelling breasts and lips of honey; no
straight-limbed servants of their pleasure to wait
on them with caressing fingers; no rich spoils carried
back from the fields of war to the mud hut, the earth
oven, and the thatched roof; no rings of soft gold
and necklaces of amber snatched from the fingers and
bosoms of the captive and the dead. Those days
were no more. No vision of loot or luxury allured
these. They saw only the yellow sand, the ever-receding
oasis, the brackish, undrinkable water, the withered
and fruitless date-tree, handfuls of dourha for their
food by day, and the keen, sharp night to chill their
half-dead bodies in a half-waking sleep. And
then the savage struggle for life ­with all
the gain to the pashas and the beys, and those
who ruled over them; while their own wounds grew foul,
and, in the torturing noon-day heat of the white waste,
Death reached out and dragged them from the drooping
lines to die. Fighting because they must fight ­not
patriot love, nor understanding, nor sacrifice in
their hearts. War! War! War! War!

David had been too late to stop it.
It had grown to a head with revolution and conspiracy.
For months before he came conscripts had been gathered
in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here
and there, far south, tribes had revolted. He
had come to power too late to devise another course.
One day, when this war was over, he would go alone,
save for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes
and peoples upon another plane than war; but here
and now the only course was that which had been planned
by Kaid and those who counselled him. Troubled
by a deep danger drawing near, Kaid had drawn him
into his tough service, half-blindly catching at his
help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief
that luck and good would come from the alliance; seeing
in him a protection against wholesale robbery and
debt ­were not the English masters of finance,
and was not this Englishman honest, and with a brain
of fire and an eye that pierced things?

David had accepted the inevitable.
The war had its value. It would draw off to the
south ­he would see that it was so ­Achmet
and Higli and Diaz and the rest, who were ever a danger.
Not to himself: he did not think of that; but
to Kaid and to Egypt. They had been out-manoeuvred,
beaten, foiled, knew who had foiled them and what they
had escaped; congratulated themselves, but had no
gratitude to him, and still plotted his destruction.
More than once his death had been planned, but the
dark design had come to light ­now from
the workers of the bazaars, whose wires of intelligence
pierced everywhere; now from some hungry fellah whose
yelek he had filled with cakes of dourha beside a bread-shop;
now from Mahommed Hassan, who was for him a thousand
eyes and feet and hands, who cooked his food, and
gathered round him fellaheen or Copts or Soudanese
or Nubians whom he himself had tested and found true,
and ruled them with a hand of plenty and a rod of
iron. Also, from Nahoum’s spies he learned
of plots and counterplots, chiefly on Achmet’s
part; and these he hid from Kaid, while he trusted
Nahoum ­and not without reason, as yet.

The day of Nahoum’s wrath and
revenge was not yet come; it was his deep design to
lay the foundation for his own dark actions strong
on a rock of apparent confidence and devotion.
A long torture and a great over-whelming was his design.
He knew himself to be in the scheme of a master-workman,
and by-and-by he would blunt the chisel and bend the
saw; but not yet. Meanwhile, he hated, admired,
schemed, and got a sweet taste on his tongue from
aiding David to foil Achmet ­Higli and Diaz
were of little account; only the injury they felt in
seeing the sluices being closed on the stream of bribery
and corruption kept them in the toils of Achmet’s
conspiracy. They had saved their heads, but they
had not learned their lesson yet; and Achmet, blinded
by rage, not at all. Achmet did not understand
clemency. One by one his plots had failed, until
the day came when David advised Kaid to send him and
his friends into the Soudan, with the punitive expedition
under loyal generals. It was David’s dream
that, in the field of war, a better spirit might enter
into Achmet and his friends; that patriotism might
stir in them.

The day was approaching when the army
must leave. Achmet threw dice once more.

Evening was drawing down. Over
the plaintive pink and golden glow of sunset was slowly
being drawn a pervasive silver veil of moonlight.
A caravan of camels hunched alone in the middle distance,
making for the western desert. Near by, village
life manifested itself in heavily laden donkeys; in
wolfish curs stealing away with refuse into the waste;
in women, upright and modest, bearing jars of water
on their heads; in evening fires, where the cover
of the pot clattered over the boiling mass within;
in the voice of the Muezzin calling to prayer.

Returning from Alexandria to Cairo
in the special train which Kaid had sent for him,
David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest.
There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand
years would give place to rational modern homes; and
as he saw a solitary horseman spread his sheepskin
on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer,
as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and
Medina, the distance between the Egypt of his desire
and the ancient Egypt that moved round him sharply
impressed his mind, and the magnitude of his task settled
heavily on his spirit.

“But it is the beginning ­the
beginning,” he said aloud to himself, looking
out upon the green expanses of dourha and Lucerne,
and eyeing lovingly the cotton-fields here and there,
the origin of the industrial movement he foresaw ­“and
some one had to begin. The rest is as it must
be ­”

There was a touch of Oriental philosophy
in his mind ­was it not Galilee and the
Nazarene, that Oriental source from which Mahomet also
drew? But he added to the “as it must be”
the words, “and as God wills.” He
was alone in the compartment with Lacey, whose natural
garrulity had had a severe discipline in the months
that had passed since he had asked to be allowed to
black David’s boots. He could now sit for
an hour silent, talking to himself, carrying on unheard
conversations. Seeing David’s mood, he
had not spoken twice on this journey, but had made
notes in a little “Book of Experience,” ­as
once he had done in Mexico. At last, however,
he raised his head, and looked eagerly out of the window
as David did, and sniffed.

“The Nile again,” he said,
and smiled. The attraction of the Nile was upon
him, as it grows on every one who lives in Egypt.
The Nile and Egypt ­Egypt and the Nile ­its
mystery, its greatness, its benevolence, its life-giving
power, without which Egypt is as the Sahara, it conquers
the mind of every man at last.

Again they relapsed into silence,
broken only by the clang, clang of the metal on the
rails, and then presently another, more hollow sound ­the
engine was upon the bridge. Lacey got up and put
his head out of the window. Suddenly there was
a cry of fear and horror over his head, a warning
voice shrieking:

“The bridge is open ­we
are lost. Effendi ­master ­Allah!”
It was the voice of Mahommed Hassan, who had been
perched on the roof of the car.

Like lightning Lacey realised the
danger, and saw the only way of escape. He swung
open the door, even as the engine touched the edge
of the abyss and shrieked its complaint under the hand
of the terror-stricken driver, caught David’s
shoulder, and cried: “Jump-jump into the
river ­quick!”

As the engine toppled, David jumped ­there
was no time to think, obedience was the only way.
After him sprang, far down into the grey-blue water,
Lacey and Mahommed. When they came again to the
surface, the little train with its handful of human
freight had disappeared.

Two people had seen the train plunge
to destruction ­the solitary horseman whom
David had watched kneel upon his sheepskin, and who
now from a far hill had seen the disaster, but had
not seen the three jump for their lives, and a fisherman
on the bank, who ran shouting towards a village standing
back from the river.

As the fisherman sped shrieking and
beckoning to the villagers, David, Lacey, and Mahommed
fought for their lives in the swift current, swimming
at an angle upstream towards the shore; for, as Mahommed
warned them, there were rocks below. Lacey was
a good swimmer, but he was heavy, and David was a
better, but Mahommed had proved his merit in the past
on many an occasion when the laws of the river were
reaching out strong hands for him. Now, as Mahommed
swam, he kept moaning to himself, cursing his father
and his father’s son, as though he himself were
to blame for the crime which had been committed.
Here was a plot, and he had discovered more plots
than one against his master. The bridge-opener ­when
he found him he would take him into the desert and
flay him alive; and find him he would. His watchful
eyes were on the hut by the bridge where this man
should be. No one was visible. He cursed
the man and all his ancestry and all his posterity,
sleeping and waking, until the day when he, Mahommed,
would pinch his flesh with red hot irons. But
now he had other and nearer things to occupy him, for
in the fierce struggle towards the shore Lacey found
himself failing, and falling down the stream.
Presently both Mahommed and David were beside him,
Lacey angrily protesting to David that he must save
himself.

“Say, think of Egypt and all
the rest. You’ve got to save yourself ­let
me splash along!” he spluttered, breathing hard,
his shoulders low in the water, his mouth almost submerged.

But David and Mahommed fought along
beside him, each determined that it must be all or
none; and presently the terror-stricken fisherman who
had roused the village, still shrieking deliriously,
came upon them in a flat-bottomed boat manned by four
stalwart fellaheen, and the tragedy of the bridge
was over. But not the tragedy of Achmet the Ropemaker.

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